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GitHub Pages vs Swagger UI: What are the differences?
Key Differences between GitHub Pages and Swagger UI
GitHub Pages is a static site hosting service that allows users to host their websites directly from their GitHub repositories. On the other hand, Swagger UI is a tool for visually documenting and interacting with APIs.
Hosting Platform: The main difference between GitHub Pages and Swagger UI lies in their hosting platforms. GitHub Pages allows users to host static websites directly from their GitHub repositories, while Swagger UI is typically hosted separately and used as a tool to interact with APIs.
Purpose: GitHub Pages is primarily used for hosting websites, including personal blogs, documentation, and project landing pages. Swagger UI, on the other hand, is specifically designed for documenting and exploring APIs, providing a user-friendly interface for developers to test and visualize APIs.
Static vs. Dynamic: GitHub Pages hosts static websites, meaning that the content is pre-built and does not change dynamically. Swagger UI, on the other hand, is dynamic and provides a real-time interface for interacting with APIs, allowing users to make requests and see responses in real-time.
Integration: While both GitHub Pages and Swagger UI can be used in conjunction, they serve different purposes in terms of integration. GitHub Pages can be used to host the documentation of an API, which can include a link to a separate Swagger UI for developers to test and explore the API.
Customization: GitHub Pages provides users with more flexibility in terms of customization, allowing them to fully customize the look and feel of their websites by using themes and customizing the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Swagger UI, on the other hand, provides a predefined interface that follows the OpenAPI specification and has limited customization options.
Developer Focus: GitHub Pages is more focused on providing a platform for developers to host and showcase their projects in a visually appealing manner, while Swagger UI is specifically designed to help developers understand, test, and interact with APIs.
In summary, GitHub Pages is a static site hosting service that allows users to host their websites, while Swagger UI is a tool for documenting and exploring APIs. While both can be used for hosting API documentation, GitHub Pages focuses on static websites and provides more customization options, whereas Swagger UI is specifically designed for API interactions and has a predefined interface.
From a StackShare Community member: "I just started working for a start-up and we are in desperate need of better documentation for our API. Currently our API docs is in a README.md file. We are evaluating Postman and Swagger UI. Since there are many options and I was wondering what other StackSharers would recommend?"
I use Postman because of the ease of team-management, using workspaces and teams, runner, collections, environment variables, test-scripts (post execution), variable management (pre and post execution), folders (inside collections, for better management of APIs), newman, easy-ci-integration (and probably a few more things that I am not able to recall right now).
I use Swagger UI because it's an easy tool for end-consumers to visualize and test our APIs. It focuses on that ! And it's directly embedded and delivered with the APIs. Postman's built-in tools aren't bad, but their main focus isn't the documentation and also, they are hosted outside the project.
I recommend Postman because it's easy to use with history option. Also, it has very great features like runner, collections, test scripts runners, defining environment variables and simple exporting and importing data.
We use Netlify to host static websites.
The reasons for choosing Netlify over GitHub Pages are as follows:
- Netfily can bind multiple domain names, while GitHub Pages can only bind one domain name
- With Netfily, the original repository can be private, while GitHub Pages free tier requires the original repository to be public
In addition, in order to use CDN, we use Netlify DNS.
Pros of GitHub Pages
- Free290
- Right out of github217
- Quick to set up185
- Instant108
- Easy to learn107
- Great way of setting up your project's website58
- Widely used47
- Quick and easy41
- Great documentation37
- Super easy4
- Easy setup3
- Instant and fast Jekyll builds2
- Great customer support2
- Great integration2
Pros of Swagger UI
- Open Source49
- Can execute api calls from the documentation34
- Free to use29
- Customizable19
- Easy to implement in .Net14
- Mature, clean spec13
- API Visualization12
- Coverage9
- Scaffolding6
- Easy to use6
- Vibrant and active community5
- Elegant4
- Adopted by tm forum api3
- Clear for React2
- Api1
- Can deploy API to AWS API Gateway and AWS Lambda1
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Cons of GitHub Pages
- Not possible to perform HTTP redirects4
- Supports only Jekyll3
- Limited Jekyll plugins3
- Jekyll is bloated1
Cons of Swagger UI
- Need to learn YAML and RAML3
- Documentation doesn't look that good2
- Doesn't generate code snippets in different languages1
- You don’t actually get in-line error highlighting1
- Does not support hypermedia1